“When I first read Sunnybrook: A True Story with Lies by Persimmon Blackbridge, I couldn’t stop holding my breath, this hard ache in my chest solidified like a fierce, red hot ember throbbing through every page. It’s impossible to ask an author to pick only one favourite Canadian queer...
Marcus McCann Scrapper, if swollen open lids allow before the vanity—cramped, lit like discount grocery—I’ll tilt my skull back, squint, note this bacterial shiner, sacré coeur eye patch. A nightbird laid a heavy pink shit in my socket. A camera is a bad eye, my eye now a bad camera. You...
“Strip, a novel by Andrew Binks, describes the dancer’s ego as a ‘frail and determined thing.’ We meet a boy in Edmonton, a swimmer, who longs to be a ballet dancer. Strip follows the trajectory of this gay male dancer, and his frail yet resilient ego, from secret ballet lessons...
“Around the time that I was coming out, my university invited Shane Rhodes to visit our school and read from his debut collection of poetry, The Wireless Room. I was mesmerized by his work, and it opened up a whole new vista of possibilities for me. Here was poetry written by a young...
“Writers tend to feel isolated and misunderstood at the best of times, and that seems especially true when you’re gay or a still-in-the-closet-poet-and-former-competitive-junior-curler-from-the-suburbs like I was when the writer Lynn Crosby, during a boozy reading in Victoria that included us...
by Matthew Walsh Arleen Paré, author of Paper Trail, Leaving Now and the Governor General’s Award-winning book Lake of Two Mountains (Brick Books, 2014), has a new collection out this year, landing right on the heels of her last book. He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car (Caitlin Press...
